PM Modi during the pre-Budget meeting with economists.Twitter Narendra ModiFinance minister Arun Jaitley may on Thursday, February 1, announce big-ticket schemes and populist changes, but beneath each and every move will work calculations to keep Modi in power at least till 2024.And what about 2024 and beyond? Expect Union Budget 2018 and those in the next few years to pave the way for policies that will let the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate after Narendra Modi continue without much backlash.Interestingly, one common refrain at the grassroots of the party seems to be “2024 tak Modi, uske baad yogi [Modi till 2024, Yogi after that].” This is Yogi Adityanath, the current chief minister of Uttar Pradesh – the state that has sent the most number of prime ministers to office.Modi himself is a Lok Sabha member from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, and the common political understanding is whoever rules UP also rules India. Thus, it won’t be surprising if the BJP chooses Adityanath as Modi’s successor, and budgets henceforth have a little extra to keep UP happy with the saffron party.This is also the BJP-led NDA government’s last full budget before the next Lok Sabha elections, and many other political calculations seem to be casting a shadow on it. For one, Modi may decide to call for the Lok Sabha elections to be held this year itself. Second, he may take the combined-election route — simultaneous Lok Sabha and state Assembly elections — to beat the anti-incumbency factor in some states. More importantly, he may take some steps to chip away at the poll planks that political rivals might use. Here’s a breakdown of how each factor may influence Budget 2018: In picture: EVMs used in the first phase of Gujarat Assembly polls being stored in a strong room in Surat, Gujarat on Dec 10, 2017. [Representational image]IANSCentral and state-wise issuesIndia is going to see Assembly elections in four major states in 2018: Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The North-Eastern states of Tripura, Mizoram, Meghalaya and Nagaland are also due for elections this year.However, since none of the North-Eastern states has much of a Congress presence, and the BJP rules all the aforementioned major states barring Karnataka, the South Indian state will be the one the BJP will focus on. And thus, the Union Budget 2018 can be expected to have some sops and development projects for the state.As for Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the BJP will be fighting the anti-incumbency factor there, besides several regional issues.In Madhya Pradesh, for example, the BJP will look to mollify farmers who have protested from time to time. In Rajasthan, on the other hand, it might have to do something for people who have been affected by the actions of cow-protection vigilantes.But the saffron party may have another ace up its sleeve to counter anti-incumbency. Farmers stage a demonstration against the killing of farmers of Madhya Pradesh’s Mandsaur; in New Delhi on June 15, 2017.IANSPossibility of combined and early electionsOf course, the BJP will have an eye on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, and tweak Budget 2018 accordingly. However, there is now buzz that Prime Minister Narendra Modi may call for simultaneous state and Lok Sabha elections. Combined state and Central elections are nothing new in India. That is how they happened in the first couple of decades or so since Independence. And then, Rajesh Jain – the man behind the saffron party’s Mission 272 in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections – wrote in an article in the Quint on January 23 that the BJP might call for general elections “in the next 100 days.”If this happens, along with the combining of polls, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana may also see polling along with the Lok Sabha elections and the eight aforementioned states.With elections combined, voters may not want to choose candidates from two different parties in the Assembly and Lok Sabha polls — something the BJP will count on to help it beat the anti-incumbency factor in the states. To that end, the BJP may make Union Budget 2018 much more broad-based, so people prefer it at the Centre, and by extension in their states.For example, the North-East may receive special focus in the form of some infrastructure and defence projects, but the garb this focus will wear is the defence against China, which the whole country may throw its weight behind.Then there is the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana, aka the Saubhagya scheme, launched last year with an aim to bringing electricity to all rural areas across the country. Mint has quoted sources telling it that the scheme will find a mention in the Budget, which means the BJP will have ammunition to needle the “dark era” of successive Congress governments in India.Encroaching on Opposition agendaThe BJP is also looking to take away the caste-based or region-based agenda that several regional parties with national-level ambitions have built their voter-base on.The saffron brigade was out in full strength looking to win Dalit support when Mani Shankar Aiyar called Modi a “neech kism ka aadmi,” and the Shiv Sena – which has said it will is parting ways with the BJP for the Lok Sabha elections – will have to deal with the saffron party taking credit for the massive Shivaji statue coming up in Mumbai.The BJP is expected to continue this “encroachment” with Union Budget 2018. It has already started with the Congress’ plank of empowering women, with Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian saying: “In our bid to further the cause of women’s empowerment, the cover of Economic Survey 2018 is pink.” In picture: Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Subramanian (right) shows the pink Economic Survey 2017-18, in New Delhi on January 29, 2018.Press Information BureauAnother political move Jaitley might choose to make is bringing back wealth tax and inheritance tax. This should help the BJP firm up its pro-poor image, something it can once again use to hit back at the Congress.read more

A 10-km tailback was created on Dhaka-Chattogram highway in Daudkandi upazila of Cumilla on Friday, causing immense sufferings to passengers, reports UNB.The tailback was created stretching from Meghna-Gumti Bridge in Daudkandi point to Munshiganj point from Thursday night as two trucks went out of order over Meghna Bridge, said Abul Kalam Azad, officer-in-charge of Daudkandi highway police camp.The OC said, police removed the two trucks from the bridge and the traffic started returning to normalcy slowly.

Kolkata: Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will inaugurate the Rath Yatra festival organised by ISKCON on Saturday morning.There will be different functions at the temple premises. She will be inaugurating the Rath Yatra and at around 1 pm, it will start moving ahead from Hungerford Street and pass through AJC Bose Road, Sarat Bose Road, Hazra Road, SPM Road, ATM Road, Chowringhee, Exide Crossing, Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Outram Road to reach Brigade Parade Ground. Also Read – Speeding Jaguar crashes into Merc, 2 B’deshi bystanders killedThousands of people will be turning up to take part in the Rath Yatra. People from different walks of life will start pouring into the city from Saturday morning itself to attend the biggest Rath Yatra festival in Kolkata. The police have also made an elaborate arrangement to avoid any untoward incident during the Rath Yatra festival on Saturday. Steps have also been taken to ensure that no traffic congestion happens when the Rath passes through the important thoroughfares. The top brass of the Kolkata Police have held a meeting in this connection and chalked out a plan to divert vehicles through other roads. Additional policemen will be on-duty for the security of the devotees who will take part in the Rath Yatra. Policemen in plainclothes and women cops will also be deployed. Also Read – Naihati: 10 councillors return to TMC from BJPThe chariot will be staying at Brigade Parade Ground till July 13 and people can visit to offer prayers to Lord Jagannath, Balaram and Subhadra. There will also be a fair at the ground on the eve of Rath Yatra. It is on July 22 noon that the festival of Ulta Rath Yatra will start. The Rath will be brought back to the temple through Outram Road near Park Street Metro, Jawaharlal Nehru Road, Dorina Crossing, S N Banerjee Road, Moulali Crossing, CIT Road, Suhrawardy Avenue, Park Circus 7 Point Crossing, Shakespeare Sarani and Hungerford Street. The Rath Yatra will be celebrated across the state on Saturday with great pomp and show where lakhs of devotees will gather at Mahesh in Hooghly.read more

October 6, 2017 Growing a business sometimes requires thinking outside the box. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. 6 min read Who is most qualified to weigh in on the quality of your mobile app’s experience? Hint: It’s no one on your dev team. It might not even be anyone at your company. The best judge and jury of your app’s user experience are real users. They’ll rate their experience later, when they finally get their hands on it. But, later isn’t the ideal time for you to find out you’re not delivering the goods.Related: I’m Buying Your Customer Experience, Not Your ProductThe biggest and best tech companies bring real users into every stage of their research process, from concept to release. Yet most companies have room to improve their customer experience, probably due to a few remaining myths surrounding how QA is done. Having built a career as a software tester and founded my own testing company, I’ve discovered that it pays to think differently when it comes to perfecting the customer experience. Here are a few of the myths I’ve debunked over the years:Myth 1: User stories deliver the best customer experience.Engineering and development teams know how their product works best. They made it, after all! In the testing stage, though, that kind of familiarity is like looking in a mirror. You can only judge your own image according to your own expectation of what you’ll see. What you need to know, however, is what other people see when they look at you.User stories tell how a feature should work in a given scenario. Internal testers can validate it. External testers, however, tell us if a feature worked in the scenario that matters most: theirs. User stories, after all, are speculation. Without external testers, you don’t know how users truly experience or fix your product. We’ve helped CBS Interactive, for example, to reproduce bugs that they may be aware of but don’t immediately know how to fix. Without an outsider perspective companies waste countless hours trying to reproduce bugs instead of actually fixing them, but it doesn’t have to be that way.User experience is inherently personal. Think about who really knows how you, personally, use each room in your home — whether you like to read in the sunroom, or do most of your socializing at the kitchen counter. It’s not the architect, nor the contractor — it’s you. Similarly, the people who know the real paths they take in your product’s workflow may not your dev team. It’s the people you hope will take the journey.Related: If You’re Asking Customers How You Can Help, It’s Too LateMyth 2: Beta testers make great QA testers.Your beta testers share something very special with your developers and QA team: experience and understanding of your app. That experience is a great thing until you’re looking for a fresh perspective. Knowing how you have used an app in the past will influence how you use it today. Another analogy: The first time a child sees a gate, she doesn’t know that the latch opens it, much less how. In fact, she might not even want to go through the gate at all. She might even try to use it for something else, like a climbing ladder.Your app’s beta testers are no different. They have expectations and familiar routes. They are already conditioned to working around what might have once been less intuitive. A lot of the time they don’t know how to reproduce issues or don’t know how to find the key technical causes of a bug. Since beta testers tend to look at the app from their point of view — which may be different than most of your customers — they don’t always make a difference in QA.New users are a blank slate. They can tell you that your gate’s lock is not intuitive. They are much more aware when anything isn’t the best it can be — or when what they needed was a ladder, but you gave them a gate.Related: You Can Collect Customer Data and Deliver a Better Experience Without Violating PrivacyMyth 3: QA teams can perfectly envision the customer’s perspective.The best customer experience improvements come from a combination of internal resources and real-life users. You want quality pros at the helm whenever possible. They provide structure, process, consistency and guidance. But, recruiting a fresh perspective for feedback can help broaden the narrow view of internal testers. Whether they’re validating app functionality or providing feedback about your implementation, real users across a range of demographics, devices and experience levels give great insight into your app by simply executing their tests in the wild, as only they can.Apart from the service we provide, our clients find value in our weekly bug reports and regular check-ins so they can understand their strengths and weaknesses in the development cycle, not simply check another box on the way to a build release. Teams like Outlook Mobile and Salesforce know that a single test cycle could reveal a bug that capable of upending development priorities or even causing teams to recognize and fix it. Reporting doesn’t just save time — it saves money, too.Related: Why Customer Experience Is Your Key to SuccessMyth 4: Enhancing customer experience isn’t a development priority.The inherent speed of agile methodologies doesn’t negate the need for a killer customer experience — just as having timely QA doesn’t negate the need for testers to crush hidden bugs. While some organizations save QA for the end of development, it deserves the budget and resources of the whole engineering team. Consider this: Most companies spend 31 percent or more of their IT budget on QA and testing. If you’re not there yet, you definitely have the opportunity to enhance QA’s impact on the customer experience.Companies like Lyft are now competing exclusively on the customer experience. They realize that quality is so essential to their brand that they can’t afford for testing to be a “nice to have.” If your QA team is overwhelmed with projects or your app rating has plateaued, ask yourself: Which customer experience myth are you buying into?Related Video: The Difference Between Customer Service and Customer Experience Free Webinar | Sept. 9: The Entrepreneur’s Playbook for Going Global Register Now »read more